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Quiñ (full name Bianca Leonor Quiñones: "Quiñ is just the other half of me") has been singing in choirs since age four, but it took many years and experiences for her to fully come out of her shell. "I subconsciously gained all of this knowledge about pitch and harmony; it was like my little secret training that I never knew I was training for," she says of her upbringing.

After getting her heart broken at 19 and living alone for the first time, she started writing music and reflected on her vocal skills. "I made a bet with myself," she says. "Every opportunity that made me feel uncomfortable when it came to singing or sharing my art, I would just do it."

Nowadays, she's making "fantasy soul music," inspired by a formative-years soundtrack of Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Barbra Streisand, and Janet Jackson. Quiñ's first album, Galactica, came out last year. This summer, she played Afropunk in Brooklyn and her second album, Dreamgirl, drops this fall. "'Dreamgirl' is the sequel to 'Galactica' because I never want to bury 'Galactica,'" she says. "I always want to keep it afloat and have it coexist with whatever I want to come out next because the songs write themselves. It's like there's this giant book evolving, and these are just the first two chapters."